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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29466060">Reverence</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharpistheblade/pseuds/sharpistheblade'>sharpistheblade</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Also incest, Codependency, Consensual Underage Sex, First Kiss, M/M, Mutual Pining, Obsessive Behavior, Self-Hatred, Self-Reflection, This is my BruDami magnum opus, brudami, this is also a little unhealthy, this is underage yo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:48:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,189</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29466060</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharpistheblade/pseuds/sharpistheblade</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian imagines killing Bruce because he is angry at himself and somehow, patricide, or at least the thought of it, quenches his thoughts since, in his visions, he can always bring his father back, no matter how many times he kills him, no matter how many times he kisses his dead, cold lips in the violent fantasies he indulges in.<br/>Because he does, but only after he’s dead.<br/>He can’t imagine admitting his desires, his yearning, to his father, not even as he kills him - it is only after.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bruce Wayne/Damian Wayne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please keep in mind Damian is still very much underage in this fic and that there are sexual and violent themes scattered throughout the story. </p><p>If any of that bothers you, is best you leave now, I didn't ask you to click on this, you saw the tags.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I am troubled</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Immeasurably</em>
  <br/>
  <em>By your eyes</em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <em>I am struck</em>
  <br/>
  <em>By the feather</em>
  <br/>
  <em>of your soft</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Reply</em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <em>The sound of glass</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Speaks quick</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Disdain</em>
  <br/>
  <em>And conceals</em>
  <br/>
  <em>What your eyes fight</em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <em>To explain</em>
</p><p><br/>Jim Morrison, <strong>The American Night</strong></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It begins with a sword.<br/>It begins with darkness too and, if Damian would have been smarter, he would have figured out where it was all going the moment he tilted his blade just slightly, just to position it perfectly under his father's chin. <br/>They had both emerged from darkness - one with splatters of blood across his face, the other swimming in a pool tainted with it. Damian should have figured out that them eventually meeting would not end in the other’s demise. He imagined many scenarios in which it would all go to shit but not this one, not like this.<br/>Not with heartache and tears. Not with <em>yearning.</em></p><p>He should have cut his throat right then and there, he thinks sometimes, when he’s angry at himself the most. He imagines doing it on occasion, slashing a gaping mouth bleeding red from ear to ear. He can almost feel the warm blood running down his blade, down his small hands and pooling down on the inside of his bent elbow, dripping at his feet. That sadistic vision is quickly replaced by sorrow because this execution comes within the context of loss.<br/><br/>Damian imagines killing Bruce because he is angry at himself and, somehow, patricide, or at least the thought of it, quenches his thoughts since, in his visions, he can always bring his father back, no matter how many times he kills him, no matter how many times he kisses his dead, cold lips in the violent fantasies he indulges in.<br/>Because he <em>does</em> kiss him, mouth open and warm, but only after he’s dead. He can’t imagine admitting his desires, his yearning, to his father, not even as he kills him - it is<br/>only<em> after</em>.</p><p><br/>“Damian.” Bruce’s voice brings him back into focus with the gentleness of a slap in the face. He looks up from his plate as his mind races back to the then and now. He can’t remember what they were talking about.<br/>Eventually, he looks up at him as he sits there, chairs away from <strong><em>him</em></strong>, in a black sweater, with a glass of whiskey in his hand. It shines in honey-gold in between the ice cubes and his father’s face is warm in the light. He’d cross the distance and touch it, if only he had the courage.<br/>Damian doesn’t know what to reply, so he doesn’t say anything at all.<br/>Bruce’s voice, low and mellowed down by the alcohol insists: “Is everything okay?”<br/>Damian nods:<br/>“Yes. I guess I just lost myself for a moment there. Continue.”<br/>“It’s dinner you know, there’s no need to be stoic while eating dessert.” Bruce attempts a joke, accompanied by a half-smile. He looks younger when he smiles and sometimes Damian can see a vision cross his mind, of how his father must have looked years ago, before he was even a concept in the man's mind. It makes his insides curl against each other, tightening a spot in his stomach, twisting and turning like a vice. <br/>“I know. Just a lot of thoughts at once, I guess.” Damian replies, making his hands busy with the slice of cake in front of him. He doesn’t even like it, it’s too sweet. He tries to shrug noncommittally and his father seems to accept that as a good enough answer.<br/>Bruce brings the glass to his lips and sips the liquid slowly, savoring the taste it leaves on his tongue.<br/><br/>They often have dinner together like this - Damian finishes with dessert and Bruce with a glass of whiskey, after which Alfred usually goes to sleep and it’s just the two of them in the dining room. If it’s cold, the fireplace crackles with wood, if it’s warm, the large windows rest open, allowing the evening breeze in.<br/>Damian likes it when it’s cold, like tonight, because it mellows Bruce down in a way he’s sure no one has seen him before. Or at least, he likes to believe it to be so because he’s selfish and greedy and a Bruce mellowed down by whiskey and firelight means more attention for him. They have no qualms about eating in silence because their silences are always comfortable and Damian appreciates them - it’s one the reasons why it’s hard to patrol with Dick sometimes, as much as he likes him. Dick feels the need to fill in the silent spaces that stretch between them but that’s where Damian lives. In the soft night time breeze, in the wind rushing past their ears as they swing from one building to the other. In the echoes from distant traffic and the steady tattoo of the rain on the asphalt.<br/>It’s comfortable there and that’s where Bruce also prefers to be. Damian knows because he’s been watching him for a long time.<br/>He’s always watching.<br/>He can’t do otherwise.<br/><br/>Bruce pushes his chair back, walks towards the couch in front of the fireplace and sits down, settles in comfortably to firegaze,<em> like a fucking caveman</em>. But Damian gets it - sometimes you need to stare into nothing just to get your mind to stop turning. It’s the curse of people like themselves, who have been forced to become adults before their time and took the weight of an entire city on their shoulders, as if it would make a difference, or mean anything.</p><p>Damian is aware that Bruce sometimes asks himself if any of this will be worth anything at all because Damian asks himself the same thing.<br/>He is self-centered enough to make himself believe that him and Bruce share the same thoughts. He wants it to be so because more than anything, he wants them to be one - they are already the same flesh. He fantasizes about them being the same mind. A hivemind of two, protected by their indulgence in a common sin.<br/>The logical part of Damian’s mind tells him what’s real, yes it does - in a monotone and repetitive voice but he still indulges because it took him a very long time to even allow himself the luxury of fantasy.<br/>His training tells him this is a dent in his armor but the knots in his stomach, the fire in his groin, they tell him he needs to have at least one vice. Just one. His mother’s disappointed face looks at him from memory and he turns his eyes away because it feels like a slap in the face.<br/><br/>He places the fork on the side of the plate, cake left unfinished, hands in his lap as he looks at his father where he sits in silence, shadows dancing across his face.<br/><em>I’d kill for you</em>, he wants to tell him. But he wouldn’t get it. The intensity of his feelings, aside from their lack of morality, would not be something he could relate to. Not because his father was not, once, capable of them, but because he’s lost that ability somewhere along the way.<br/>You don’t tear into the dark and touch insanity with the tip of your tongue night after night and expect to come out intact. It doesn’t work like that.<br/>The fight always takes.<br/>Victories always take.<br/>It’s small things that they rip away from you, but take they still do.<br/><br/>Damian fumbles with his napkin for a moment before he gathers enough courage to walk away from the table. It takes even more courage to sit down on the floor, close to him. Titus, who had been sleeping beneath the table, joins him and drops his heavy body next to Damian’s thigh. He pets him absently, pretending he’s not interested in Bruce’s presence, as if he can’t feel warmth radiate from him, as if his towering presence doesn’t tie knots in his stomach.<br/>He’d lay at his feet, if only his pride would let him.<br/>God, he’s tired.<br/>Bruce is tired too, that’s why he’s drinking. He never drinks unless he’s exhausted because he gets too exhausted to sleep and then he crashes too hard. So instead he chooses to allow a glass or two to lull him to sleep.<br/>Damian knows, because he’s been watching.<br/>He wonders, in passing, if he will get a taste for alcohol when he’ll be older. He snuck a sip a while ago and he didn’t necessarily like or hate his father’s choice of whiskey.<br/>“Damian.” His name tears through the sound of the fire. He doesn’t lift his head immediately. He gives Titus one final pet before he rests his hand on his back and only then do his green eyes meet his father’s.<br/>“Father?”<br/>In the firelight, he is mountain. He is titan and god and Damian can’t take his eyes away from him. For a moment, he imagines him tender but he banishes that thought from his mind.<br/>“There’s something-” he exhales. Takes another sip and Damian feels apprehensive “Something I wanted to ask you. Is there anything on your mind?”<br/>“Something’s always on my mind.”<br/>“I mean something specific. You seem troubled and you’ve been like this for a long time now.”<br/>“I suppose it’s just teenage hormones, if I seemed any different.” Damian shrugs and looks back at Titus, gently petting him with the tips of his fingers.<br/>“I know it’s difficult.” A pause. Not for the dramatic but because for him it’s hard to talk about matters of the heart. It’s okay, Damian gets it. “I know I am difficult. But if you want to talk, you can. Whatever it’s about.”<br/>No, he can’t. He can’t say a single word about this, for the rest of his life, or however long this will last.<br/>“Understood.” He replies. It sounds fake as hell.<br/>Then there’s a moment, like a sudden intake of breath, that’s shared between them and even though Damian is not facing Bruce, he can feel the tension in the air. He doesn’t know where it’s coming from but he doesn’t turn around because, foolishly, he puts his trust in him.<br/>Next thing he knows, Bruce’s hand is caressing his hair. It’s a terrifyingly gentle gesture that leaves Damian at a loss. If he turns around to face him, something will break in his composure and Damian knows it, so he sits there on the carpet and pretends to pet Titus still. Bruce’s hand goes through his hair with gentle movements, back and forth, back and forth and then he puts his hand on his forehead and pushes the hair out of his face.<br/>Without realizing what he’s doing, Damian bends his head backwards, following his father’s hand and looks at him upside down. What’s shared between them in that moment, he doesn’t know, all that he knows is that his father smiles, as if he’s amused at the childish gesture and Damian’s heart falls in his stomach, where it’s churned into a million little pieces.<br/><br/>His back hits the edge of the couch and Bruce’s hand rests on the back of his head, the tips of his fingers behind his ear, on his neck. He wonders if he can feel his pulse. He must, because his heart is thundering inside him. His blood is an angry river inside his veins.<br/>He didn’t ask for this. He never would have, had he been given a choice but here he was nonetheless. Adoring and pliant under a gentle touch, stubborn and rebellious only by the virtue of the mask he’s chosen to wear.<br/>His head slightly tilts to the right and his cheek touches Bruce’s thigh. The fabric of his pants is a little rough against his skin but he’s never been this close to him, not like this. It exalts him and seeps fear into him at the same time.<br/>When Bruce doesn’t say or do anything, he allows himself the freedom of wrapping his arm around his leg, resting his hand just above his knee. He’s warm and large when compared to his thin and small arm and in response to his movement, Bruce’s fingers rub circles on the back of his head.<br/>Damian shakes.<br/>He is not cold, but he’s shaking still. He’s livewire and he can’t make sense of what he’s feeling, though God knows he’s trying to keep it under control. He resists the urge to nuzzle into his father’s thigh, resists the urge to look at him, resists saying a single word or even breathe too hard, so as not to upset the fragile balance between them. Whatever this is, he’ll take it because he’s hungry. He’s lonely and afraid too and his father’s touch is warm and reassuring.<br/>His mind screams inside his skull and he stays silent and stoic because he doesn’t know how to be otherwise.<br/><br/>He resists the urge to speak, he resists the urge to touch, to caress, to nuzzle. He resists because it’s what he always does. And Bruce keeps his hand there and he doesn’t move or say a word for the longest time and before he knows it, Damian feels a strong body holding his own. Through half opened eyelids, he sees the dark hallways of the manor getting swallowed by darkness as Bruce turns the lights off one by one.<br/>What time is it and when did he fall asleep?<br/>He doesn’t know. All he knows is that he’s too old to be held in someone’s arms like that but it’s his father’s embrace and as much as he wants to tell him he’s a teenager now, not a toddler, his mouth clamps shut. He smells his perfume and knows it will stick to his own clothes until at least tomorrow and he thinks that waking up next to that scent will be the smallest of mercies. He drifts in and out of sleep, his dreams mingle with reality and they feel like hours even if only seconds pass.<br/><br/>He’s deposited on his bed with more gentleness than he thought Bruce would be able to convey, but his arms, strong and capable, cradle him like he’s something fragile and precious and Damian would almost feel truly loved, if only his heart would stop telling him he’s terrible and tainted for clinging on to his father the way he does.<br/>Unaware of the terrors that lie beneath his son’s heart, Bruce covers him up with the blanket and rests his palm on Damian’s cheek, his thumb going in circles over his flushed skin. It only rests there for a few precious moments before he feels his weight leave the bed, hears him walk away from the room, the door closing behind him with a click.<br/>Damian would cry, if he wasn’t so tired and half asleep.<br/><br/>But he dreams of crying.<br/>He dreams of love but he also dreams of sorrow and his ribcage is cut open in the dream where he’s standing in a room of stone. He stabs through it with his mother’s knife, pulls out his heart and eats it until he chokes with his own blood and wakes up in a sweat.<br/>He’s lied to himself in a thousand different ways.<br/>That this is not what he really wants, that it’s a<em> phase</em> or that it’s a <em>psychological trauma</em> that he can tackle somehow. He’s done a lot of reading and tried a lot of mind tricks.<br/>The fact still remains that it’s before sunrise, that he’s had a nightmare about carving his own heart out of his chest and eating it - the fact still remains that he woke up in a sweat and his clothes still smell like his father’s perfume. The fact still remains that he’s breathing in his own shirt and that he’s stroking himself to completion under the sheets.<br/>His hips jerk up in the air, hungry for contact and friction and he yearns for touch. He’s starved and lonely and the only person he thinks of when he gets like this is Bruce. And he hates himself for it but it’s the only way he can get himself off. He’s aggressive and he hurts himself, stroking too hard, angry at himself but aroused nonetheless.<br/>What does he see?<br/>He sees eyes, steel-blue but warm in the fire light. He sees the way his pants rise between his legs when Bruce sits down on the couch, the generous valley of warm flesh they cover. He feels his arms around his body, he feels himself fit between them like he belongs there, because he<em> does</em>.<br/>He knows how it goes - he is a child but he’s a child that is also a man, his vision scarred by memories of sexual abuse, rape and orgies within the League of Assassins. He's seen them, through half open doors as he stalked through the halls at night.<br/>He’s not a stranger to sexual desire, not a stranger to its manifestations or to what it leaves behind and he used to resent it because he never understood it. Now he relishes in it because it’s the first time it makes sense to him. The first time when love, fucked up as it is -and what follows in its shadow- means <em>anything at all.</em><br/><br/>The thought of someone else being inside him terrifies him but if he imagines it’s Bruce, that fear dissipates. Because he trusts him -he wants to trust him.<br/>He puts his faith in that body night after night almost, during the fantasies he only allows himself long after everyone’s out of the house or gone to sleep. Hands, always hands, taking care of him, strong, scarred hands holding his body down, a heavy body looming over him, covering him in shadows, cradling Damian beneath it, bending his body under its will.<br/>He cums in his hand, hot and sticky, with '<em>father'</em> etched on his lips, lodged in his throat, with his perfume stinging his nostrils and it takes him just an intake of breath for guilt to rush over him in waves.<br/>He cleans his hand on the pajama pants he didn’t get to wear to bed that night and turns around, alert and awake, on his stomach. Stares into nothing for a long time, sees the room becoming brighter and brighter as 5 a.m comes to pass and stretch into the next hour, all accompanied by cold October sun rays.<br/>He thinks about a lot of things and about nothing too - briefly, he thinks about his mother. About the story of how she killed a nurse maid and let him swim in a pool tainted with her blood. He thinks about life and death too, because that’s always on his mind and then he thinks about his father, beautiful and dark, resting in the shadows.<br/>His heart aches and he doesn’t like the sting.<br/>He cries into his pillow but he cries silently, with tears that burn like fire across his skin. He knows he has to, lest he gives himself away that he’s suffering.</p><p>Once the crying is done, he’ll be able to compose himself because there will be nothing left of him but emptiness. Emptiness, he can deal with, because it will help him focus. Love, well, that he can’t, because it’s misplaced.<br/><br/>When Bruce sees him over breakfast, Damian's eyes are hollow, empty and red-rimmed.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>What is the root of this suffering? Why does it burrow so deeply into the soul? Why are its tendrils<br/>teeth? Why is love the core of sorrow?<br/><br/>I love you as I love myself and through me, as I am tainted, so are you. The concept rolls and coils<br/>into infinity and doesn’t need sustenance because it feeds itself with itself and is thus, eternal. It<br/>has all the power because it has given itself the power and it will not stop consuming until it wills<br/>itself to stop doing so.</p><p>However, this love is suffering and through suffering, there is meaning<br/>because what is sacrifice without loss?<br/><br/>I love you as I hate myself.</p><p>Through loving you, I am tainted but it’s the same love that makes me<br/>better because in its frightful passion and adoration, it becomes something undistilled and pure.<br/>And from these heights, my allegiance to you, filthy and vile as it is, it’s still more unsullied than<br/>any other that claimed to have come before it.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>How close is this to a final cut?</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I fall. Sweet blackness.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Strange world that waits &amp; watches.<br/></em>
  <br/>
  <em>Ancient dread of non-existence.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>If it's no problem, why mention it.<br/></em>
  <br/>
  <em>Everything spoken means that,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>it's opposite, &amp; everything else.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I'm alive.<br/>I'm dying.</em>
</p><p><br/>Jim Morrison, <strong>Explosio</strong><strong>n</strong></p><p> </p><p><br/>He steals now.<br/>Damian’s always been a thief but whereas before he stole glances, now he begins to steal touches whenever he can, however he can and he is self-assured enough to believe that they go unnoticed.<br/>Bruce pretends he doesn’t see because he’s good at pretending. If his mind is playing tricks on him however, he’s not so sure.<br/>Damian is not the only child that made an impact on his life and not the only one who wanted affection from him. Kids do, teenagers too, even if the latter age group’s not very good at voicing it.<br/>But not like<em> this</em>.<br/>Not accompanied by this volatile behavior that reaches new heights and new lows every day.<br/><br/>The wind sweeps past him and it smells like rain. His suit keeps him warm and the cape trails behind him as he walks across the ledge of the Gotham Cathedral with measured steps. Damian is crouched beneath the gaping mouth of a gargoyle, eyes searching the horizon for only he knows what.<br/>He’s small enough to fit under the sculpture but old enough to have blood on his hands. A manchild, stuck somewhere on the cusp between the two, dancing a balancing act on a knife's edge.<br/>Bruce has loved all his kids, best way as he could, which doesn’t really mean much in the long run. But he’s never loved one like he does his own, no, he’s never loved any of them in this wretched and terrible way that makes him sick to his stomach to think about sometimes.<br/>But not all the time.<br/>And it’s those times that terrify and exalt him to heights he never thought possible of himself before.<br/>Where did it all come from, he doesn’t know.<br/><br/>He thought it’s because Damian reminds him of his mother but he doesn’t: he’s Bruce through and through, save for the color of his eyes and that of his skin. So what is it?<br/>He lusts after his taut body with a ferocious intensity he’d only reserved for one night stands. But this is relentless - it doesn’t fade in the morning, it doesn’t fade after a particularly explosive jerkoff session. It persists, nags at the back of his skull incessantly with brutal violence. He can barely stop himself from touching him, so he often keeps his distance, unless mellowed down by a glass or two of whiskey when he allows himself the luxury of touch. The decadent pleasure of a lingering caress, much like he did a few nights before.<br/>When Damian had leaned his head into his thigh, the submissiveness of the gesture hit Bruce like a punch in the face and almost gave him whiplash.<br/>He’s never done it before and Bruce kept replaying the moment in his mind over and over again, chastising himself for running his hands through his hair like he did, in the same affectionate manner of a lover. He’d been unable to stop himself and it took everything in him not to pull Damian in his arms and kiss his entire face right then and there. It had been hard enough to hold him and carry him to bed later on. Hard enough to not put his mouth on him as he lay half asleep in his bed afterwards.<br/><br/>It’s because Damian steals.<br/>He yearns for touch and sometimes Bruce can almost imagine Damian wants him in the same way. But he’s still too young to understand desire, too young to understand himself and what he needs or what is good for him. Bruce knows he fools himself into believing his own flesh and blood could look at him and see anything more than a domineering, sullen man who behaves like a tyrant at worst and has the emotional sensitivity of a rock, at best.<br/>He’s made himself stop thinking about him but sometimes the intrusive desires slip through the cracks and when they do, they unleash an avalanche of emotions he didn’t even know he possessed anymore.<br/>It’s all lust, it’s desire, it’s filthy and revolting but it’s also full of immense love. The feeling threatens to overflow every time Damian searches for his touch, every time he steals one and thinks it’s gone unnoticed. Bruce is bursting at the seams and he doesn’t know how to control whatever this is because he can’t place it anywhere in the grand scheme of things.<br/>He’s never been interested in boys, his own or anyone else’s but Damian occupies his mind in a way he shouldn’t and Bruce is so far gone into self loathing he doesn’t know where the line between tyranny and affection has begun to blur. He’s more physical with him now - he shoves him and grunts at him instead of talking one moment, and caresses his hair the next.<br/><br/>“Where to now?” Damian asks, swinging by the lip of the gargoyle. He swings back onto the ledge to join him with the question etched on his face.<br/>“Home, I guess. It will be light soon anyway.”<br/>Damian doesn’t answer and neither of them move because they’re both looking at the same thing: a thin line at the horizon, purple, red and blue, all mixing into one strange-looking sunrise alight with color. Gotham’s lights seem to flare up in shimmers in its wake somehow, as if the sunrise has electrified the neon too. The sky looks like it's burning from within. <br/>“That’s nice.” Damian says and there’s a hint of wonder in his voice.<br/><br/>He loves Damian because he’s broken and bloody but in spite of those things, he still looks at a sunrise with awe, like he has not seen hundreds, like he has not seen places so strange and mystifying others wouldn’t even fathom to imagine. A killer resides in his son’s heart but so does a teenager and also a man and that is where the distinction blurs and becomes a different creature altogether.<br/>Under the bruised light of that October morning, Damian steals again: he puts his hand on Bruce’s lower arm, in the hollow of his elbow and he wraps his fingers around the muscle there in an intimate gesture that could mean anything. Damian steals and, curse all the gods out there, Bruce lets him. He lets him take as he closes his eyes for a moment against the sunlight and the distant<br/>smell of the rain.<br/>He could kiss him now, just before sunrise, before the world’s awake, just for a moment, steal something Damian will never be able to give someone else and selfishly keep it for himself. Apologize later.<br/><em>He could.</em><br/>He could do a lot of things but he doesn’t because both those actions revolve around the fact he loves him. <em>I want to take from you because I love you; I want to not take from you because I love you.</em><br/>He turns his back to the sun, moves his arm away from Damian’s grasp and walks off the ledge.<br/>“Let’s go.” He says, walking towards the shadows.<br/><br/>Damian stays on the ledge for a moment longer and the image of him there, a delicate silhouette on the backdrop of a dark city, burns an image into Bruce’s eyes and becomes etched in his memory. He’s a touch away from cursing it all to hell and he’s standing on the edge of a precipice every time Damian gets closer to him.<br/>He overflows with love for him but it’s because of that love that he can’t touch him, that he has to fight against his love with that very same love.<br/>And that inner battle devours him.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p><br/>I carry you like a cut, in the middle of my chest. Exposed rib cage, heart, lungs, guts and all, I<br/>mean. A gaping wound that barely lets me inhale before it tears the breath out of me again.</p><p>This suffering is just self-flagellation because I don’t know how else to love you without loving you.<br/><br/>And I want to say I’m sorry but how can any excuse sound legitimate when I indulge in your face,<br/>your skin, the softness of your hair, on a daily basis and disguise it as anything but what it actually<br/>is?<br/><em>You <strong>can’t</strong> love like this</em>, I tell myself, but here I am, still <em>loving</em>.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>The assassin's bullet</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Marries the King</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Dissembling miles of air</em>
  <br/>
  <em>To kiss the crown.<br/></em>
  <br/>
  <em>The Prince rambles in blood.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Ode to the neck</em>
  <br/>
  <em>That was groomed</em>
  <br/>
  <em>For rape's gown.</em>
</p><p><br/>Jim Morrison, <strong>The New Creatures</strong></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>Alfred’s gone to sleep a long, long time ago but Damian snuck out of his room eventually. The fight from before kept him up and didn’t allow him to fall asleep, he kept twisting and turning for hours, until he finally gave up.<br/>Titus looked at him from where he was sleeping at the foot of the bed but didn’t follow Damian out of his room.<br/>Bruce met up with Barbara and Tim for a scouting mission that he’d been kept out of. He’d thrown a tantrum and disguised it as nothing but stubbornness and an over-inflated sense of self-importance. It did not diminish from the damage Bruce managed to inflict on him. With one well-placed sentence, he’d almost brought him to tears.<br/>His tantrum had nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with, well, everything else.<br/><br/>Somehow it felt right to sneak out into the living room and raid his father’s whiskey collection. Somehow it felt right to taste every bottle and eventually settle on a nice, soft rum that was sweet on the tip of his tongue and burned as it went down his throat.<br/><br/>He is already buzzing when Bruce walks down the dark hallway, towel in his hand, merely a dark shadow blending in with other shadows. Damian watches him backtrack and then walk into what little light bleeds through from beyond the windows of the large living room. He’s had a shower in the cave and smells like soap and shampoo still.<br/>The black shirt and sweatpants still carry the Batman along with them somehow, even if he is out of costume - as if his father has not quite managed to fully shake off the energy of the creature that inhabits his mind. Damian tilts his head to the side, just a little, as he considers: perhaps this is one of the reasons he feels like he does about him, because of this shared darkness that Damian does not have in common with anyone else in the world.<br/>“What are you doing?” Bruce asks, voice low and measured.<br/>“I don’t know.” Damian answers, honestly, tongue a bit more loose than he remembers it being.<br/>He feels a little bold, though not quite at peak courage just yet. Bruce huffs and puffs like he always does when he gets annoyed but this time the fight’s gone out of him, at least for the moment. That usually means it was a difficult night and that somewhere during those hours, something was lost - a life, a clue, a chance. Could be anything. Damian doesn’t ask.<br/>His father walks the remaining distance between them and takes the glass from his hand. Damian doesn’t argue, just looks up at the man who towers above him and watches him sink down the entire glass in one go.<br/>Yeah, bad night.<br/>“Refill, please.” He says, handing the glass back to Damian, who now looks at him with a question in his eyes. Bruce sighs and drops the towel on the back of the nearest armchair as he collapses on the sofa. “Please, Damian.” He repeats, rubbing his eyes.<br/>Damian can’t tell through the darkness but judging by his tone of voice, it was a <em>very</em> bad night. So he obeys and walks the distance to the bar, pours him a generous amount and returns with the glass. He stands in front of him and offers it by holding it from the rim and the bottom, like a chalice for a despondent god. And perhaps somehow, he is, at least to Damian.<br/><br/>“Bad night?” He dares a question.<br/>Bruce grins into the rim of the glass and says only: “It wasn’t great.” And then swallows again. He won’t tell him it’s too much to drink in one go not because he wants his father to be better than drown his failings in alcohol but because Damian knows how he gets when he drinks a little and it’s just the two of them and that’s what he’s been looking forward to every time they’re alone in<br/>the house. After the dust settles, after everyone goes home or to their rooms.<br/>“Yo want to talk about it?” Damian tries again.<br/>“Absolutely not.”<br/>Damian nods in agreement and eventually decides to sit down on the couch too, at the opposite end. He can really feel the buzz now - the room spins but just a little and there’s a floaty sensation in his body that feels particularly pleasant. He likes it. It makes his bad thoughts go away and there’s a tingle in his stomach. They don’t talk but that’s okay, he’s not bothered by it because Bruce is back and hasn’t scolded him for drinking or told him to go back to his room, so it’s fine. Just being in his presence is a desired result at any given time.<br/>Bruce drowns the generous glass in one go and hands it over to Damian again, without a word and Damian obliges, bringing him another, sitting down in the same spot as before.<br/>His father sips again, but this time with more measured gulps, before his voice breaks through the darkness: “You’re unusually pliant tonight.”<br/>“I suppose it’s the alcohol.” Damian shrugs and finds it a little funny. He looks at Bruce who is slouched in the sofa, muscles finally relaxed, a stray strand of dark hair bobbing across his forehead as he speaks:<br/>“How much did you have?”<br/>“About a glass, I think.”<br/>“Amateur.” Bruce laughs to himself and Damian’s offended, though he doesn’t really know why. Bruce immediately points a finger at him with the same hand he’s holding the glass in: “But don’t ever do it again though. I don’t have what it takes to carry you through an alcoholism phase.”<br/>Damian lifts his eyebrows in a sarcastic gesture but lifts his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. Bruce seems satisfied with that.<br/><br/>Then there’s silence again. It stretches like the shadows between them do and Damian feels his eyelids getting heavy as the room dances around him. It’s a pleasant feeling.<br/>He hears Bruce shuffle to his left and he turns his head to see what’s happening and next thing he knows, his father stretches out on the sofa and rests his head on his thighs. His hair is still a little damp and Damian can feel it through his pajama pants. He’s enveloped in the clean scent of Bruce's shampoo and he sits there, hands suspended in the air for a moment, unsure of what he’s supposed to do.<br/>This never happened before.<br/>Bruce’s eyes are closed for a while but when he opens them, the sharp look in them catches Damian by surprise, as if it’s the first time he’s seeing them. He’s looking at Damian much in the same way too - like he’s just been made aware of his existence, and he’s trying to understand it. Damian can hear his heart thunder in his chest, hear its echo in his ears. Bruce is heavy on his thighs but he welcomes the pressure, the warmth of him so close to his own skin.<br/>He doesn’t know what to do with his hands so one settles in Bruce's hair while the other rests on his chest. It's intimate, like between lovers. If not for the fact the room is spinning just a little, Damian is not sure if he would have had the courage to do this otherwise.<br/>His father’s heart thumps a rhythm inside his chest too and Damian finds it curious, because his heart is usually rather quiet and temperate but he himself is shaking again, because this proximity to Bruce is maddening.<br/>“What is it, Damian?” Comes the question. It could have a hundred answers.<br/>“What do you mean?”<br/>Bruce frowns, looks away from him and then back as his hand, warm and calloused, covers Damian’s on his chest. Worse even: it holds it. His father never held his hand and the gesture is so full of tenderness it feels like a stab in the chest. It almost knocks the wind out of him. If he would have been a lesser person, if he would have been a normal teenager, he would have probably burst into tears, that’s how high-strung he is at this moment.<br/>“Why are you sad?”<br/>“I am not.”<br/>“You are not okay, Damian. I see it. Alfred sees it. Titus follows you around like you’re sick.“<br/>“I am fine.”<br/>“You are not.” Bruce frowns again and the word is final, because he says so. If he would be less intoxicated, Damian would raise his voice and turn bratty but he doesn’t feel like it right now. He just feels mellow and terribly lonely. He resists the urge to caress his father’s hair, those black coils that wrap around his fingers.<br/>“I can’t talk about it.”<br/>“You don’t have to talk to me, there’s a lot of-”<br/>“I mean, I can’t talk about it with <em>anyone</em>. <strong>Ever</strong>.”<br/>Bruce moves his head a little, as if he’d tilt his head to the side, on Damian’s thighs. The shadow of a smile crosses his lips.<br/>“Surely, it can’t be that tragic. Not at your age.”<br/>The words burn and this time Bruce didn’t even mean them to hurt. But they still raise a fire inside Damian and he’s angry. A ball of fire blossoms in his chest and stays there, radiating heat and bile.<br/>“You don’t know <strong>anything</strong>.” He spits out, frowning, angry “What do you understand of tragedies? Of the complete collapse of a man’s soul, the very foundations on which he was built?” Bruce is confused at the outburst and it shows. He stares at him with those blue eyes like he will somehow coerce answers out of him.<br/><em>You are ruin</em>, he wants to tell Bruce, <em>you are the unknowing catalyst of something that terrifies me</em>. But he doesn’t say these things because the words don’t come out and even if they would, he still wouldn’t understand.<br/><br/>“Why do you suffer?” Bruce demands. Damian wishes he would just move out from his lap. Wishes he’d just lay there forever.<br/>The answer is sharp and it leaves his mouth before he can stop it:<br/>“Because of you.”<br/>Bruce swallows dryly and Damian’s hand flexes and un-flexes beneath his own, as it lays over his chest. He looks as apologetic as Bruce could ever look but there’s a shift in his gaze, like a veil dropped. The change is subtle but Damian sees it because all he’s been doing in all this time since they first met, was watch him.<br/>When he asks: “How can I fix it?” in a voice just above a whisper, something inside Damian completely comes apart. He doesn’t know what it is exactly but he knows it hurts and that he doesn’t want it. His lip quivers and his body’s shaking, just a little. He doesn’t want his hand to rest beneath his father’s anymore because he’ll be able to tell.<br/>“You can’t.” He answers and looks away because he can’t face him anymore. All his training was for nothing: he was taught not to cry and not to sway in the face of emotional turmoil yet here he is, behaving disarmingly average.<br/>“Damian, listen-” Bruce says, leaves it hanging in the air as he inches upwards, ready to get up in a sitting position and talk him down from whatever he thinks this is.<br/>Damian thinks he should know better in that moment, that he’s smarter than this, but whatever instincts that guide him tell him that he truly isn’t because the next thing he does is put his small<br/>hands on Bruce’s face and press a chaste, awkward kiss on his lips.<br/>Bruce freezes for a moment under the touch and when Damian moves away, the tears that gather in his eyes fall over Bruce’s cheeks in large, salty droplets.<br/>They’re barely inches apart now, breathing each other’s breath, both looking equally terrified.<br/><br/>Damian has been scared of a lot of things in his life but this time his fright is accompanied by pain, a terrible pain that comes from the realization that he can’t turn back time and that what has been done will change the course of the events in his life forever.<br/>How does he take this back?<br/>The sharp blade of reality looms over the back of his neck, guillotine-like, cold and unforgiving.<br/>Bruce slithers out from the vice-like hold of his small hands and retreats to the other side of the couch for a moment and then gets on his feet. He walks fast towards the hallway but changes his mind, returns and stands there, one hand on his hip, the other rubbing his forehead and eventually dropping down to his mouth, as if he’s been poisoned.<br/>How does he take it back? Damian wonders.<br/>How does he undo this?<br/>He cracks his fingers in his hand so hard a sharp pain cuts through the back of his hand for a moment. Bruce paces the space before him like a caged animal and Damian wants to scream. He looks away from where his father’s feet threaten to make a hole in the carpet. He can’t see very well anymore because his eyes are blurry and he wants to make this stop, behave like an adult and pretend he feels nothing. But he has no control over anything right now and it’s maddening.<br/><br/>He wipes his eyes and his nose with his sleeve, trying to keep quiet.<br/>He blurts out the most pathetic <em>I’m sorry</em> that has ever left his mouth and bursts into a suppressed cry as it comes out. He can’t control it anymore, though God knows he’s trying really hard to. But there’s a weight in his chest and he feels like, if he doesn’t cry it out, it will suffocate him. It comes out in hiccuped cries and his nose clogs up so hard he can barely breathe properly.<br/>It takes a moment or perhaps it's longer, until he sees Bruce kneel down in front of him and pull his hands away from his face.<br/>His father's face is a mask of grief too but he’s methodical: he has the damp towel in his hand and he wipes away at his nose and cheeks without a word. It just makes it worse for Damian - that it’s <em>this</em> that makes Bruce take care of him. He’s angry and disgusted with himself for being so weak.<br/>He cries and cries still until it settles, until Bruce has cleaned up his face so many times it feels red, raw and burning. It’s only when he’s done that his father drops the towel on the carpet and his<br/>hands hover over Damian’s legs for a moment, then finally drop down to rest on his own thighs. He struggles for words and he struggles for a long time before he finds them. When he looks back<br/>up at Damian, he can’t read his face:<br/>“What is this?” Almost a whisper, a secret held between hushed breaths. <br/>“I told you,” Damian says, voice so hoarse it barely sounds like he’s saying words. He tries again: “I told you: you can’t fix it.”<br/>“Explain.”<br/>“I can’t. That’s all there is to it. I tried to fix it. Tried to find a cause or an explanation but I couldn’t. The only logical explanation I deduced,” Damian says, pausing to breathe, because his nose is completely clogged “ is that you’re my first love. You-you just don’t happen to be someone my age. Or someone who is not related to me.” The last words come out congested. He doesn’t like the taste they leave in his mouth or how they hang in the space between them, like poison. <br/><br/>Bruce looks at him, at his face, like he’s searching for something else to argue with what Damian has just said but Damian knows there’s nothing there. So, with all the courage he still has left, he looks at him in the eye and sees nothing but pain.<br/>Bruce’s hands eventually find courage too and go up to Damian’s arms, where they stay, warm and protective.<br/>“Don’t,” Damian tries to shrug him off “you’ll make it worse. I feel like filth. I’d rather you don’t look at me anymore. Please.” His voice is weak as he says that, heavy with guilt and shame. <br/>“I’m your father,” Bruce says and Damian recoils internally under the words he expects Bruce to say “so I think I can do whatever I want.”<br/>What does that even<em> mean</em>?<br/>His hands squeeze his arms before they go to Damian’s face and rest there, where they caress his cheeks and push his hair away from his forehead. There’s a softness about his father in that moment that was not there before. Damian didn't know he could be like this, that he could coerce this tenderness out of him. Conflict is clearly written all across his face.<br/>“Damian,” he whispers, shaking his head as he speaks, as if trying to reinforce his words “I can’t.”<br/>“I know,” Damian replies, trying to push his hands away from his face “let me go.”<br/>“No, Damian,” his hands trap him as he speaks through his teeth almost “I don’t want you to suffer, thinking something’s wrong with you or that I hate you, otherwise I wouldn’t tell you this: I want this too. But I can’t. <em>Do you <strong>understand</strong></em>?” He presses on the last words, allowing them to sink in and it takes Damian a moment to understand what his father is implying.<br/>Somewhere in the back of Damian’s mind, the sword severs. What exactly, he doesn’t know, but he knows it will never be a part of him ever again. He stares at Bruce in disbelief. It cannot be true.<br/>His mind races. Stupidly, the first question that comes out of his mind is:<br/>“Have there been others? The Robins?"<br/>Bruce frowns under the weight of that question but Damian can tell he speaks the truth just fine:<br/>“What? No. No. <strong><em>Never</em></strong>. It never even crossed my mind!”<br/>They look at each other in silence for a moment but this silence, unlike all the other silences they’ve had before, is not comfortable. It stretches between them like an elastic band, tension-filled<br/>and ready to snap.<br/>Bruce deals the first punch:<br/>“This is the first and only time. I don’t know why. How. And I am afraid.” The blow is dealt with a shiver almost. Damian knows Bruce never admitted fear before, to anyone. However, the situation is paramount for both of them and Damian understands that Bruce will do what needs to be done so he, his son, will feel safe, even if it means admitting to a weakness. He knows that in one glance, he doesn’t know how he is so sure of it, but he is and he loves his father all the more for it.<br/>“Then what now?” He asks. He is happy. He is sad. He wants to scream until his voice gives out. But he stands still as stone instead, under Bruce’s caresses, wondering if it’s the last time he will feel them cross paths over his skin.<br/>“I don’t know.” Comes the honest reply.<br/><br/><em>Do you want me to pretend this never happened</em>? He wants to ask, then changes his mind because it feels like he’s both won and lost everything at the same time, so why would anything matter anymore anyway:<br/>“I cannot pretend this never happened.”<br/>“Damian, can-”<br/>“I refuse.” He cuts through Bruce’s words and then he repeats, in a resolute whisper: "<em>I refuse</em>. I’ll take it to my grave if you ask me to. But I won’t act like it never happened. I need it.” He continues, more fired up than before “It’s a part of me and it will always be inside me, no matter how much I try to deny it and that is the honest truth.”<br/>Bruce looks down towards the floor and the shadows settle in the lines of his face. His hands leave Damian’s face and slowly fall down and away from his body, then settle on the edge of the couch on both sides of him. Damian misses the contact but he won’t beg for it.<br/>He’ll take it.<br/>He puts his hands on his father’s face, forcing it upwards and he kisses it. He kisses his cheeks, his temple, his jawline and the corner of his mouth. Bruce’s hands wrap around Damian’s small wrists but his attempts at pushing him away are half-hearted at best.<br/>“Stop, Damian.” He asks, weakly, with a desperate whisper.<br/>“How much truth do you want from me, father? It’s what I am, this. It’s what we are, both of us. I don’t know what it makes us but at least it’s a mutual madness.” He says. He's weak in that moment, so terribly and shamefully weak that he'd crawl on his knees to get what he wants. He'll beg.<br/>He doesn’t know how to change his father's mind even though he understands his reasoning. Bruce cups his face again and his fingers dig into Damian’s skin to the point of pain. He takes it, grits his teeth and their foreheads touch, painfully so.<br/>“<strong><em>I can’t</em></strong>” Bruce speaks, through his teeth, then lets him go. He’s broken and Damian has never seen him look so tired before, all the years of struggle suddenly etched into his face. For one moment, as he is there, kneeling on the floor, in between shadow and light, Damian sees how his father will look like decades from now, when he’ll be in his prime and Bruce will slowly inch closer to decay. He sees the lines that will be carved into his face and the white hair that will pepper his temples and he realizes with a heaviness in his chest that he will love him still.<br/><em>What a terrible tragedy that is</em>, he thinks,<em> to love so certainly in spite of time, of dust and certain loss.</em> <br/>Damian wants to ask him if it’s because of his age or because of the blood between them - which one carries the true weight? But he doesn’t want to hear it.<br/>Bruce gets up from the floor, slowly and he stands there for a moment, as if frozen in time and then his hand stretches out towards Damian.<br/><br/>“It’s late.” Is all he says.<br/>Damian takes his hand and Bruce helps him up but, as they both walk up the stairs to the first floor, neither of them lets go. No lights are on but they both know their way around the house with their eyes closed. Bruce’s bedroom is at the end of the left hallway and he stops for a moment, his fingers loosening their grip. Damian prepares for the sword to sever yet again. He prepares his knees for the fall, for the pleading and the begging, all those things that are so beneath him it almost feels like he is turning into another person. <br/>He clings on to Bruce's hand with despair in his heart and words of mercy resting on the tip of his tongue, waiting for the moment his father will attempt to shake his presence off him. <br/>Bruce doesn’t.<br/>But he still won't look at him. He turns around and begins to walk towards his bedroom, with Damian following in his wake like he's part of his shadow. The boy has been in this room many times, though he never stayed and never when the lights were off. The sheets are cool to the touch as he lays in the king size bed he’s only seen from afar and the bed feels safer when his father’s body rests next to his own. He is dark and beautiful and this is the first time they’re in the same bed together.<br/>“I can’t.” Bruce says, and leaves it hanging in the air, apologetic almost.<br/>“You don’t have to.” Damian tells him “If I can just stay here next to you, that’s fine too. I promise.”<br/>Bruce lets out a huff which can be taken as the leftover of a laughter that died somewhere in his throat. Damian’s heard it before and it always comes out of a state of exasperation. Nonetheless, Bruce’s hand, the one that’s not curled under his head, travels the distance between them and pulls him in, allows Damian to curl around himself and make a nest between his father’s chest and arm.<br/>He lays there, like a bullet lodged in his chest, a permanent scar, a memory. Bruce draws circles across his back with his fingers, over and over again in quiet repetition and Damian feels at peace. He’s safe in those arms, he knows it to be so. Safer than anywhere else purely because they refuse to break them, even though they could, even though they both want it.<br/>It’s a safety like no other.<br/>"I can't do this." Bruce says again, not necessarily to Damian but to himself, to the silence, to the wind outside. The words fade into the darkness without reply, without as much conviction as before. <br/><br/>Damian doesn’t sleep because his heart still thunders in his chest, though he hears Bruce’s peaceful breathing above his head. The minutes turn to hours and he’s not done yet taking inventory - of his father’s arms, his fingers and how his body relaxed under the warmth of the blanket, how his much larger torso turned inward a little, as if to shelter Damian.<br/>He thinks Bruce is long asleep when he finally looks up to take in his face but his father’s eyes open slowly, heavy with sleep still, but alert. They mellow down when they realize who it is they’re looking at.<br/>Damian allows himself a gentle touch: his fingers across Bruce’s jawline, a small, gentle caress after another. His father closes his eyes, as if he relishes in the touch and that simple gesture fills Damian’s heart with joy - he can bring him comfort. The feeling that settles in his chest when he thinks of that is new, but it feels good.<br/>It’s Bruce this time, who moves in. It’s him who steps over his own boundaries and touches Damian’s lips with his own.<br/><br/>He leads now - and Damian lets him. He lets Bruce kiss him gently and he follows his movements the best way he can. His first kiss is soft and mellow, patient and intensely pleasurable. A wet, hot tongue parts his lips and he lets it, he lets it take whatever it wants from him and their mouths fit together like two mouths shouldn’t - not with their difference in age and size. But they do because they’re flesh from the same flesh, Damian thinks, they’re almost the same person, the same blood, and, he wants to believe now harder than ever before, of the same thought.<br/>The arm that Bruce rested his head on slithers around Damian and pulls him closer, and he’s enveloped, one hand on the back of his neck, the other lodged in between his shoulder blades.<br/>It burns, this love, in his chest, as Bruce’s mouth becomes bolder and makes him bend under its will. Damian’s stomach is tied in knots and they’re so tight it’s almost painful, but he likes them.<br/>They kiss and stall to catch their breath through the darkness and then they kiss again and he can feel Bruce hard against his leg as they do and he’s hard too but he knows better than to ask for too much. Not now.<br/>He falls asleep in his arms as the morning light breaks through beyond the windows. His lips are red and swollen and Bruce had to tell him <em>no, no</em>, repeatedly as they both got hard against each other's bodies, fear and shame tainting his voice, but Damian is still happy because he is safe between the only pair of arms he trusts would catch his fall.<br/>Because he will fall. They both will.</p><p> </p><hr/><p><br/>There is immense beauty in ugly things and those who are capable of finding it always carry a<br/>tinge of sorrow with them, like a weight that settles in between their shoulder blades.<br/>And if we can share the same sorrow, then who ever can be more blessed than us, ugly and terrible creatures?</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>In the gloom</em>
  <br/>
  <em>In the shady living room</em>
  <br/>
  <em>where we lived &amp; died</em>
  <br/>
  <em>&amp; laughed &amp; cried</em>
  <br/>
  <em>&amp; the pride of our relationship</em>
  <br/>
  <em>took hold that summer</em>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <em>What a trip</em>
  <br/>
  <em>To hold your hand</em>
  <br/>
  <em>&amp; tell the cops</em>
  <br/>
  <em>you’re not 16</em>
</p><p><br/>Jim Morrison, <strong>The American Night</strong></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>July snuck into their lives almost without warning.<br/>Gotham’s nights are hot and sweaty and it’s hard to go to sleep so the bats and the birds stalk the rooftops in dark succession, leaving whispers in their wake. Summers are filled with an electric quality that serves as a catalyst to many terrible things.<br/>Guilt is etched on Bruce’s face in early July when they take down a pedophile ring and he doesn’t look Damian in the eye for two days. It’s hard to touch him, even, not because he doesn’t want it but because of the guilt that comes with it. It takes him a long time to be able to hold him again but when he does, it feels like heaven.<br/>A teenage girl joins a gang and her body is deposited unceremoniously in the bathtub of a man who kept her as his pet slave for weeks. The stories keep coming and Bruce takes them all personally.<br/><br/>He wakes up late in the morning that July.<br/>He’s laying on the side on the bed, naked, sheets kicked somewhere behind him, bunched in the middle, between him and Damian. He allows the sunlight to burn an image into his eyes for a while, from in between half-shut eyelids, until he feels Damian’s fingers caressing the back of his head, playing with the short hair there. He lets him do it for a few moments longer, before he turns around to face him, patrol bruises etched on his shoulders and ribs in dark blue and purple, all of them in full view under the summer sun. He’s had much worse, he’ll be fine.<br/>Damian’s green eyes hold a terrible power over him in the sunlight.<br/>They shine in hues even emeralds would be jealous of. They shimmer like the first leaves of spring and hold specks of gold in them. Bruce would know, he’s been looking at them up close for almost a year. Damian’s skin tone is a shade darker now, it always is in the summer and he sees him suppress a smile because the morning is sunny and heavy with promise.<br/>The kiss that follows is lazy. He’s had plenty of them by now and he’s not as clumsy and awkward as he’d been that first night, which Bruce still has trouble thinking too long about. He’s a year older as of January, but he is still too young. Too young to fuck but young enough to draw blood. Where do they even draw the line?<br/><br/>He doesn’t curl up in his arms anymore, not unless he’s feeling fragile or upset. Now Damian wraps his body around him, legs entwined with Bruce’s until they become a mess of limbs and skin. He’s greedy, he got greedy with every month that passed, touches, kisses, and eventually, against Bruce’s better judgement, sex. They'd been at it for the entire night the first time - it had been painful for Damian but unbearable for Bruce, though in a different way. They spent the morning after collapsed on the bed, with Bruce peppering kisses over his son's back, over his buttocks and thighs, soothing him into quiet submission. He took care of him, cleaned him up, soothed his delicate skin. In the afternoon, they started again.<br/>Damian is now insatiable but patient - he waits. He doesn’t search for his touch anymore, unless they are alone. Damian has disciplined himself in ways Bruce didn’t think him capable of, not after his outburst that very first night. But he’s been good to him, to himself, <em>to both of them</em>, bloomed into the lover Bruce would have never expected him to be, unfolded himself like a satin ribbon,<br/>soft, pliant and beautiful.</p><p><br/>Bruce had a lot of lovers in his life, none of which Damian wants to hear about - he’s prone to fits of raging jealousy that do nothing but make Bruce love him all the more because no one’s been this possessive of him before. No one’s been this enraptured in him and it makes him feel like a God.<br/>He’s had many lovers, some of them were great, others not so much but Damian is the once in a lifetime. The one you still remember with striking accuracy even in old age, the one that got away.<br/>But this bird won’t get away, somehow Bruce is certain of it, though he doesn’t know how or why - he just does. As if a part of him believes the blood that keeps them in bondage to one another has something to do with it. The thought is primal and animalistic in nature but he wants to make himself believe makes sense.<br/><br/>Damian gets on top of him, careful with his legs and elbows so as not to upset Bruce’s many bruises. He’s strong as he sits on his stomach, body still mellow from sleep but muscles well defined, taut, under his dark skin. God, he is the most beautiful thing Bruce has ever touched and he’s not even grown into his features yet.<br/>With one hand behind him, Damian slicks himself with lubricant as he places lazy kisses all over his father’s face, his temples, his mouth. By the time he’s done, Bruce is already hard and willing and it doesn’t take them long to fall into a rhythm - they’ve done this for a while now and Damian is a fast learner who likes to experiment.</p><p><br/>He rides him in tune with the July weather: slowly and patiently, working himself into it and Bruce enjoys just laying there, hands on his hips, helping him up when he needs to but otherwise not intruding on his chase for pleasure.<br/>He’s beautiful to watch. The way he finds his rhythm, the way his well-defined hip bones dip into the dark tuft of pubic hair and how his cock bounces off Bruce’s stomach, leaving behind trails of clear liquid that shimmers in the morning sun like precious gems.<br/>Bruce has already told Damian he loves him, many moons ago and so has Damian but they don’t say it very often - it’s reserved for moments that are more charged than this. But it’s important they say it sometimes because their relationship is so secret, it’s almost like they live in another reality when it’s just them. So it’s good to remind each other that there is love there, in spite of the secrecy, in spite of the guilt.<br/><br/>Bruce doesn’t mind it much and he believes neither does Damian. Because when they are alone like this, they see each other. Truly see each other, that is - a nakedness that goes beyond the skin.<br/>Damian’s seen him smile and laugh out loud in ways no one ever has and he’s seen Damian at his most vulnerable, wiped countless tears away from his eyes, kissed them away and told him it will all be okay and that even if it won’t, he’ll still be there to help him through it.<br/>They walked sandy beaches together during a short holiday in June, kissed in the shadow of palm trees and Damian looked at the full moon one night and told Bruce, out of the blue and unprompted, that he loves him so fucking much it hurts.<br/>Damian’s intensity only becomes apparent when he loves, Bruce now knows.<br/>He burns with it, it coils around him like flames - he’s jealous and intense to a level Bruce has never experienced before with anyone. He takes and he takes but oh, when he gives, he truly gives.<br/>He was molded into a killer but Bruce believes that Damian was made to be a lover.<br/>His hands go across Damian’s body, the tan thighs, his narrow hips and his chest while the boy keeps moving on top of him. He feels him on the inside, he feels himself touching that spot that makes his boy’s breath hitch and he pushes into it, just a little, earning a moan that fills the room. Bruce silences him by covering his mouth with his hand because they’re not alone in the house and it’s late. Damian smiles into his fingers once the moan is gone from his lips.<br/>“Do it again.” He asks, breathy, cheeks flushed red.<br/>“Only if you keep quiet. The windows are open.” Bruce demands and Damian just nods, his hands pressing into the headboard.<br/><br/>Bruce puts his hands on his hips, keeping him in place as he moves inside him, pushing deep, as deep as he can and Damian pulls him in, tight and warm. He bites his lips, digs his fingers into thenwood and closes his eyes, his body tense with effort. Bruce resists the urge to slam into him because he won’t be able to keep quiet so he moves in rhythm, their bodies barely disconnecting from the point where they are joined. Damian likes it like that the best because he’s filled up completely, because this is as close as they can possibly be.<br/>He orgasms with a contained cry that he has trouble holding in - his left hand goes to his mouth and he muffles it in as best as he can as he cums all over Bruce’s stomach and chest. A droplet or two lands on his chin and lower lip as Bruce allows himself to follow through with his own orgasm, while Damian clenches and unclenches, riding his own wave, riding Bruce’s too. They’re both<br/>panting and sweaty and they slip off each other’s skin with a wet sound.<br/>His body tenses up for one moment before he releases inside him, the liquid hot around his cock and Damian shakes above him, overstimulated and weak, panting, sweat beads rolling down his forehead and thighs. They both ride it out until there’s nothing left of it and Damian breathes in once, twice, before he finally slips out of him and collapses on his back next to Bruce. They lay like that on the warm sheets, stained with sweat and cum, looking at the ceiling. At how the shadows of the trees outside sway in the warm breeze.Bruce feels tired and sleepy again and his eyelashes flutter gently, the sound of the foliage from beyond the window lulling him to sleep.</p><p><br/>“Sorry.” Damian’s voice pulls him back to alertness. He doesn’t understand what the boy means until Damian’s fingers brush past his lower lip and chin. The boy’s pajama top follows, cleaning up his chest and stomach. He then wraps it around his cock and tugs it gently as he cleans, which earns him a groan from Bruce that’s half annoyed and half amused.<br/>If Damian smiles, he doesn’t see it, he only watches him cleaning his own body before the boy tosses the blouse on the floor unceremoniously.<br/>He’s become a little unattentive as of late - he leaves traces of them in Bruce’s room every now and then that Alfred could find at any moment. So he instructs Damian to always do a sweep before they leave the room as of lately but he still goes through his clothes and finds one of Damian’s t- shirts mixed in with his own. His toothbrush in Bruce’s bathroom, a candy wrapper forgotten on<br/>the opposite nightstand, on the side Bruce doesn’t really sleep on.<br/>He’s everywhere and Bruce wants him to be, but can’t really allow him to because of what the discovery would bring along with it - suspicion and, eventually, the reveal. They are both afraid of it but they both wish they could relish in the relief it would give them.<br/>This is the life they’ve chosen to live now - a life within a life, within a life. He’s Batman, he’s Bruce, he’s a father and, at the very bottom of the pyramid, he’s a lover. Whatever’s left of him after his other three personas have each claimed their own, that is all he can give to Damian.<br/>There’s guilt in there and a lot of shame but there’s also the remnants of what Bruce can call love and he hopes that’s enough. Not necessarily for redemption, because he’s never coming out of this, but at least enough for Damian.<br/>“What are you thinking of?”<br/>Bruce rubs his eyes and turns on the side, looking at the boy laying next to him, one arm under the pillow, legs sprawled in and out of the sheets.<br/>“Old age, I guess.” He answers because he doesn’t know how else to translate the turmoil inside his mind.<br/>“I’ll still be here when you’ll be old. Like this, I mean.” Damian says, as if even Bruce's old age revolves around his person. The certainty in his voice is tinged with the naive nature only someone his age can be found guilty of.<br/>“Damian…” He wants to scold him for it and tell him there will come a time when he will feel the need to move on that it’s okay to do it when it does. But the thought of saying it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He wants to do something right by him but he’s grown selfish now - he wants Damian all to himself, just for him to devour. The thought of anyone else doing it is enough to bring him into a blind rage, though he doesn’t show it.<br/><br/>Damian opens his mouth to say something but scrunches his nose at the idea before it leaves his mouth. Bruce watches his face as it changes and when he finally decides to speak again, he inches in closer, until they are close enough to kiss:<br/>“I would kill for you, if you’d ask for it.”<br/>It drives a blade through Bruce’s heart to hear it.<br/>“I would never ask you to kill.”<br/>“But I would nonetheless, and this can be our secret. Anyone. You only have to ask it of me. I want you to know that.”<br/>Bruce doesn’t reply. This is Damian’s way of saying I love you - with brutality. With the promise of blood. A part of Bruce wants to shake him and tell him to never talk like this again while the other wants to kiss his mouth until it hurts. This level of devotion can only be achieved by someone like Damian, an in-between of man and child, of killer and lover. He feels like a God again and he really shouldn’t because he’s anything but; however, a darker Bruce that resides somewhere in the halls of his mind that he doesn’t visit, likes to be loved like this - with abandon and the promise of sacrifice.<br/><br/>It stands against everything he preaches and he has no excuse for it.<br/>If he tells Damian he would kill for him too, he’d burn a bridge he will never be able to rebuild. So he doesn’t say it. But deep down inside he knows he would and it’s absolutely frightening because it doesn’t come from a place of temporary madness, from rage, no, it comes from a place of absolute, calm resolution. The conscious knowledge that he would.<br/>He runs his hand through the boy’s hair instead, across his temple and his cheeks and says nothing at all.<br/>Damian kisses his open palm in a selfless, silent act of devotion.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p><br/>All of me is all of you.<br/>I coil beneath you, inside you - the bones of your rib cage, my home.</p><p> </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for reading.<br/>If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a comment or sharing the link so others can read it too. </p><p>For other shenanigans or if you simply want to see me constantly losing my mind over Bats and Robins, visit my Twitter @sharpistheblade (adults only please)</p>
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